Thinking that the Developers had systemd in mind, I switched to systemd and rebooted. Systemd worked well, but the TP-Link adapter still did not. Since I had jumped from kernel 3.7 to 3.9-r3, I decided to try installing 3.8.8 to see if it worked. Using kernel 3.8.8 the TP-Link adapter works very well, so I will stick with that kernel for now. The curious part is when I searched entropy for linux-sabayon, I found the 3.8.8 kernel I am using now, but kernel 3.9-r3 was no longer available. So the mystery is not solved but, the adapter is working. I think it is OK to mark this solved.
Thank You Again!
N.D.

Well, solved until the 3.9-r3 kernel gets pushed to the Sabayon Weekly Entropy Repository, anyway. Perhaps there will be some changes to the 3.9.x kernel configuration or an upgrade to the kernel source code before a 3.9.x version finally gets pushed to the SL weekly repository, in which case you might get lucky. It could be that the firmware installed by the current version of the package linux-firmware is not compatible with the 3.9-r3 kernel. Anyway, all you can do is wait and see what happens.

I can now confirm the problem is related to kernel build 3.9-r3. I wiped the hard drive, and did a fresh install from 13.04 Gnome 64-bit from the monthly repository. Normal installation with no issues. Installed all updates and kernel 3.8.8, once again, no problems at all except my usual ATI Radeon open source driver problems, (slow rendering, flashing screen, and no HDMI audio). Switched ATI drivers to fglrx, and all was good. Upgraded to kernel 3.8.10 and associated recent upgrades, which worked perfectly once I eselect OpenGL set ATI. Today, switched the kernel to 3.9-r3, and the TP-Link adapter immediately quit connecting. No modifications to any configuration files except, in /etc/default/grub added "GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="nomodeset" .
The web page